Till von Wachter, UCLA

"The Labor Market Impact of Shareholder Power: Worker-Level Evidence" 

Abstract

Using worker-level data from the US Census Bureau’s LEHD program from 1993 through 2015, we show that shareholder power leads to large earnings losses for employees. We track the earnings of employees up to five years after their firms experience a material increase in concentrated ownership by block institutional shareholders, relative to employees of other firms that experience a similarly sized increase in ownership by diffused institutional shareholders. We find that over the next six years, the cumulative earnings of the affected employees decline by 10% of their pre-event annual earnings on average. Workers with “high skills” (such as those with earnings in the top tercile) and top managers (such as chief executives) bear the brunt of the negative impact, with the cumulative earnings declining by 16% and 63%, respectively. In contrast, shareholder power does not affect the earnings of employees with relatively low pay. There is also a negative impact on hiring but no impact on employee departures nor differential earnings losses conditional on departure, suggesting that separation is not the main channel underlying the earnings losses. The collection of evidence is consistent with concentrated ownership increasing shareholders’ bargaining power, which in turn reduces employees’ rents.

With Antonio Falato, Daniel Gallego, and Hyunseob Kim.

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Contact person: Kristoffer Balle Hvidberg